


I Get To Love You

by Bre



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: ANGSTY ANGST ANGST, Angst, F/M, Gen, Post-Crisis, Season 8, and a happy ending for olicity, and a little fluff... like the angsty kind of fluff, but it's an ending that could fit with what we've seen and heard so far, but so much love, don't ask me what happens DURING the crisis idk, it's not the happy ending that they all deserve, this is more bittersweet than anything, this is season 8 spec... sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-30 14:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20773604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bre/pseuds/Bre
Summary: Post-S8/Post-Crisis. Oliver says goodbye to his children... and hello to his future.





	I Get To Love You

**Author's Note:**

> I got tagged in [this chain of tweets](https://twitter.com/OlicityDreams/status/1176843546667692033) and this story just sort of fell out of me.
> 
> Title from Ruelle. (Because _of course_ I listened to Ruelle while writing this.)

Ash fell from the sky.

It swirled in gentle waves, twisting and turning, ethereal and angelic. The remnants of the final fight blanketed the wreckage around them in a sea of white, preparing the world for the coming dawn. It was a dawn that this dimension shouldn’t have seen, but they had surged into the darkness, and they had triumphed. And now the light was coming back. Color broke across the long expanse, black bleeding to purple, soft, dusky orange slowly warming everything it touched. Life stirred, breaking the sea of darkness.

“Do you have to go?”

The voice cracked, hope slashed with reality, and it tore through Oliver as he turned to his son.

“Yeah,” he told William, blinking tears away with a shaky smile. Oliver drank in every bit of the man before him, amazement, pride, and wonder filling him. It was a gift, seeing him, knowing the person he’d grown into, a gift he would never forget. Oliver took a shaky breath and nodded. “I don’t belong here anymore.”

William’s face broke, a tear slipping down his cheek. “Where will you go?” he asked.

“To find your mother,” Oliver replied, his smile simultaneously growing stronger and softening with love. “She’s waiting for me and it’s long past time I go find her,” he said, glancing back at where the Monitor stood, impassive as ever. Oliver took a deep breath and when he exhaled, the weight he’d been carrying for far too long finally fell away. He turned back. “I had to leave this dimension to stop my death on the other earths, but she was the real test and, as much as I need to be with her again, she needs to know that. The universe needed balance. I wasn’t enough. I was just the warrior they picked. _She_ was the linchpin. Our _love_ was the linchpin. When she left this dimension, she completed the circle, giving us the edge to win. And we did.”

Oliver took in the scene before him, so overwhelmed with emotion he could barely speak.

“And while that is incredible,” he continued, “it has nothing - _nothing_ \- on the pride I feel that our love - our connection - gave us you two.”

His voice cracked as he looked at his daughter.

“Stopping the crisis isn’t our legacy,” Oliver said, eyes filling again, spilling onto his smile. “You two are.”

Mia’s face finally cracked. She furrowed her brow, pursing her lips - so much like her mother that it broke and healed Oliver’s heart at the same time - before she finally opened her mouth and whispered, “Dad…”

“I know,” Oliver replied, opening his arms.

She threw herself at him and he caught her so easily, winding his arms around the quiver at her back, lifting her off the ground. He cupped the back of her head as he pressed a soft kiss to her cheek, her ear before burying his face in her long hair. She smelled of sweat and determination, the coppery tinge of blood and the burning ozone of the battlefield where they stood. But there was also something else. Something that reminded him of Felicity… of that sweet, beautiful smell that took him back to when he’d cradled his baby girl as a newborn… of every hope and dream he’d had for her…

Of home.

Her tears fell against his neck as his soaked into her hair.

“I just got you back,” Mia whispered, her hands fisting his leather jacket, gripping him so hard.

“I know, kiddo,” he replied, his voice cracking. “I know.” Oliver pulled back and brushed hair from her face, wiping her tears away. “I was always with you, though. _Always_. And I always will be. That is a promise from me to you. To both of you.”

Oliver looked to William, reaching over and cupping his face. William nodded and Oliver pulled him into his embrace along with Mia, hugging both of them tightly. They clung to him just as hard.

The sun crested the horizon.

“It’s time,” the Monitor intoned from behind them.

Mia’s jaw clenched as William flinched, both of them holding him harder.

Oliver sighed… and then he finally let them go.

“I love you. I love both of you so much. Take care of each other,” he instructed, his voice breaking. “You will get each other through anything. Don’t forget that.”

William nodded.

Mia merely stared at him.

That fierceness that had knocked him on his ass the first time he met her shined in her eyes. Oliver couldn’t help but smile, smoothing some of her hair behind her ear. She had kicked him to the curb, _literally_, besting him in the blink of an eye. That - along with watching her fight for her life, saving others, sacrificing herself, being a hero - told him she could handle anything that came her way.

Oliver dropped his hand to her shoulder, looking down at the suit she wore.

“Trust your instincts,” he told her before glancing at William and then the two women standing in the background. “I’m leaving some backup for you. Trust your team. They have your back. You aren’t alone, Mia, and you never will be.”

She blinked rapidly and gave him a short nod.

“You’re the hero I always worked to be,” Oliver told her. “_Green Arrow_.”

Her lips trembled. Tears filled her eyes before she took a deep breath and fell still again. He smiled. So strong, so stern, so fierce. She was as much his daughter as Felicity’s. Everything she was, everything she had become, took his breath away. She was everything he’d been working towards and he hadn’t even known it.

Taking a shaky breath, Oliver released them to grab the green leather hood hanging against her back and tugged it up.

“Suit up,” he told her.

She smiled, finally, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Oliver returned it, smiling at his daughter, then his son. His children. His legacy.

He nodded and stepped back, releasing them. This was no longer his fight. He was done. Both him and Felicity had played their parts. It was their turn now, and he knew with a certainty he felt in his bones that they would do better than he ever could have. It terrified him as much as it exhilarated, because there was a confidence there, too.

Mia and William were the very best parts of Oliver and Felicity, and he knew they had this.

On another nod, one they returned as they moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, Oliver turned.

“I’m ready,” he told the Monitor.

He glanced back just once when he stepped through the swirling portal, smiling at his children.

Then he turned to his future.

A future that immediately stepped into the light filling his world and toward him with the most perfect and beatific smile he’d ever seen in his life. She glowed, just like the last time he’d seen her, their last morning together. He was back in that moment as if it’d happened a second ago and he felt the lingering warmth of their bed, the caress of her hand over his back as he brushed his teeth, her kiss on his shoulder, her whispered, _“Good morning,”_ before baby Mia had alerted them that she was awake, too.

He was back.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she told him.  


“Felicity,” Oliver choked out, a sob, a cry, relief and pain crashing together and sweeping him up into the undertow, turning his entire world upside down. 

She was here. 

They’d found each other.  


He ran to her and she met him halfway. 

Oliver swept her up into his arms, laughing and crying.

“Welcome home.”  


**Author's Note:**

> Reviews literally feed the soul and muse! Thank you for reading!


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